Life in general, fiber arts in particular, near Twisp in the beautiful Methow Valley

Still Fitting in Knitting

The show, titled “Lacunae – The art of gaps, holes and negative spaces”, at the Confluence Gallery in Twisp opened yesterday. My friend Sara Ashford and I have our work displayed in what they call the Solo Gallery, which is now on either side as you walk on back to the main gallery space. Sara owns (or owned) the Ashford Gallery in Winthrop and has been carrying my rugs, scarves, shawls and shawl pins on consignment for the last couple of years. She does beautiful nature dyeing on silks and is also a weaver and member of our local guild. She is closing the gallery in Winthrop to devote more time to her own artwork, and will hopefully have a new studio space at TwispWorks (on the site of the old Forest Service complex) in the near future.

While up on Orcas Island, I was also knitting away feverishly on the embellishments for my woven and felted wall-hangings. I wanted each one to have a theme, and wound up knitting Estonian lace panels in Rowan Kidsilk Haze for the blue/green wall-hanging, and patterns from the fishermen’s ganseys of Eriskay (in the Outer Hebrides) for the black & white one. I have always loved the Eriskay ganseys and this got me excited about actually knitting one this year. My idea for the purple wall-hanging was to do stranded colorwork (Fair Isle, Bohus, etc) but this wasn’t panning out too well, so when I got home I found a yarn that worked well color-wise, and wound up knitting some elaborate cable and texture patterns from my stitch pattern books.

The idea here came from some of my friends asking me if I still knit, in slightly puzzled tones, when they observe my new obsession with weaving. It made me realize that for me, weaving is new, exciting, exploratory and offers a way to play with fiber and color and also get something completed relatively quickly. Whereas knitting is more of a “slow fiber” craft, it can take 6 months or more to complete a finely knitted sweater, but that is always OK with me – I enjoy the process and enjoy knitting challenging and complex patterns. So the wall-hangings are titled “Still Fitting in Knitting” – they are meant to be playful and whimsical, but also represent the place of the two crafts in my life at present.

They had to be in to the gallery by last Tuesday, and I was working on them right up to the end, but here they are hanging. I also have a nice selection of my plaited twill scarves in the Confluence Gallery gift shop.

Still Fitting in Knitting – Texture

Still Fitting in Knitting – Lace

Still Fitting in Knitting – Eriskay

By the way, for you traditional knitters out there, I know of two sources for patterns for complete Eriskay ganseys: Alice Starmore’s Fishermen’s Sweaters, and Madeline Weston’s Country Weekend Knits (originally published as Classic British Knits).